KABUL, Afghanistan | Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened Sunday to send Afghan troops after notorious Taliban leaders inside Pakistan in an angry warning to his eastern neighbor that he will no longer tolerate cross-border attacks.
The threat - the first time Mr. Karzai has said he would send forces into Pakistan - comes only days after a sophisticated Taliban assault on Kandahar’s prison freed at least 870 prisoners, and six weeks after Mr. Karzai survived his fourth assassination attempt.
Mr. Karzai has long pleaded with Pakistan and the international community to confront tribal-area safe havens, and U.S. officials have increased their warnings in recent weeks that the sanctuaries in Pakistan must be dealt with.
Last week, U.S. aircraft dropped bombs along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, an incident the Pakistan army said killed 11 of its paramilitary forces. The exchange ratcheted up increasingly touchy relations among the U.S., Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistan said the Afghan army had set up a military post on the border and that the Afghans were attacked by militants after agreeing to pull back, sparking the battle. No Afghan officials ever confirmed Pakistan’s version.
Analysts said they doubt military action by Afghanistan is imminent, but Pakistan’s prime minister said the threat “will not be taken well.” A Taliban spokesman warned that the Afghan army would be defeated by thousands of armed tribesmen.
Speaking on the grounds of his fortified presidential palace, Mr. Karzai told a news conference that Afghanistan has the right to self-defense, and because militants cross over from Pakistan “to come and kill Afghan and kill coalition troops, it exactly gives us the right to do the same.”
Then, Mr. Karzai warned Pakistan-based Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud that Afghan forces would target him on his home turf. Mr. Mehsud has been accused in last year’s assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
“Baitullah Mehsud should know that we will go after him now and hit him in his house,” Mr. Karzai said.
“And the other fellow, [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar of Pakistan, should know the same,” Mr. Karzai continued. “This is a two-way road in this case, and Afghans are good at the two-way road journey. We will complete the journey, and we will get them, and we will defeat them. We will avenge all that they have done to Afghanistan for the past so many years.”
In Pakistan, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said his country is a sovereign state that wants good relations with its neighbors. But he said the Afghanistan-Pakistan border is too long to prevent people from crossing, “even if Pakistan puts its entire army along the border.”
A spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said he would not comment. But another ISAF official said he thought Mr. Karzai’s comments should be seen as a reflection of frustration with militants’ safe havens, but not as a sign an attack is imminent. He asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on the topic publicly.
The U.S. has spent more than $3 billion the last two years training and equipping the army, and Mr. Karzai’s comments raise the specter a U.S.-trained Afghan military could be used to attack Pakistan.
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